


i've been waiting to smile

by themorninglark



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon - Manga, Canon Era, Gen, Hinata POV, Kenhina Friendship, M/M, Texting, possibly a prelude to Kenhina romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 14:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4225026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And he’s calling him <i>Shouyou</i> like they’re old friends already. So, Hinata decides, they must be.</p><p>(or, The Unlikely Tale of how Hinata Shouyou builds an odd friendship with a super-smart, super-quiet rival setter.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've been waiting to smile

**Author's Note:**

> I've wanted to write a Kenhina fic for ages that pays tribute to their friendship over texts. I never in a million years imagined I would be writing it from Hinata's POV. But I noticed that it's really, _really_ rare in Kenhina fic, and so... I had to make some kind of wild stab at it.
> 
> I wrote it to be gen, but it's open to interpretation.
> 
> (deep breaths, here we go)
> 
> The fic title is from Imagine Dragons' "On Top of the World", a Hinata song if I ever heard one!

_“Hey, Kenma!”_

_“Shouyou?”_

_“You use your phone a lot, right? Text me! Here, I’ll give you my number!”_

_“Text you? Um, about what?”_

_“Anything! I’ll text you too!”_

_“…Okay.”_

 

* * *

 

“Until next time, Shouyou.”

And Hinata stares at the boy with the volleyball shoes in his bag who got lost, the soft-spoken setter who was _just passing time_. Suddenly, he’s _smiling_ \- smiling! - as he raises his hand to wave -

not goodbye

_until next time_

And he’s calling him _Shouyou_ like they’re old friends already. So, Hinata decides, they must be.

Kozume Kenma walks softly, like he speaks. His footsteps barely make any sound as he leaves with the tall comb-haired guy. Kenma is short too, for a volleyball player; he’s taller than Hinata, but he doesn’t _look_ like he’s cracked 170 cm.

Hinata cocks his head to one side and stares at the retreating red jersey, curiosity rising in him like a slow humming buzz. He wonders when he will see his friend again.

 

 

He finds out the answer a _heck_ of a lot sooner than he expected.

When Kageyama asks _how do you know that guy?_ , Hinata says that he bumped into him during a run, and that he is Nekoma’s setter. It’s not really everything, but the rest of it is too complicated and messed up in his head for him to explain to a guy like Kageyama.

And anyway, this only makes Kageyama get all scary _intense_. Just like how Hinata had described him to Kenma.

 _Geh,_ thinks Hinata. He cringes and gulps as Kageyama mutters under his breath, and sends one of those death glares at Kenma’s back. He hopes that Kenma’s gonna be okay.

 

 

In the end, Hinata realises, it doesn’t matter if Kenma is okay or not, because Kenma has the bedhead guy and the rest of his team.

_We’re strong. Not because of me, but because of everyone._

That’s something that Hinata understands. Hinata has been very not-okay far too many times on the court. Off the court. In _general_. He remembers all his frantic trips to the toilet. He remembers throwing up on Tanaka-san’s lap. He remembers serving the ball into Kageyama’s head. Yeah, he can’t get very much more _not-okay_ than that.

And yet, every time, he lived to fight another minute on the court, lived to stand on his own two feet and leap into the air to meet the ball.

_One more time._

_One more toss._

_One more spike._

Looking at the Nekoma team on the other side of the net, Hinata meets Kenma’s keen gaze, and the tips of his toes tingle.

_I want to run. I want to jump. I want to watch you set the ball. I want -_

 

* * *

 

The whistle blows.

Kenma serves.

_Game on._

 

* * *

 

Kenma’s eyes are bright and sharp. Hinata watches them watch him.

Today, he learns that there is more than one way to be a super smart setter, and he is _amazed_ , and he does a little fistpump when nobody’s looking and Kageyama can’t scold him for being distracted, because how cool is it that he gets to play with someone like this?

His pulse quickens like a hurricane, pounds like his footsteps belting down the asphalt.

Kenma’s eyes are bright, but it’s Hinata who’s starry-eyed.

 

 

 _we just got back.  
_ _thanks for today_

 

 

Volleyball really is the best, thinks Hinata.

He’s grinning at his phone, because it’s lit up all of a sudden and he just got a text all the way from Tokyo and yesterday, he didn’t know anyone there; now, he knows a whole team of guys, and it’s all because of volleyball.

And the _brain_ of the team is his friend and he’s texting Hinata and that would never have happened if he didn’t go running and get lost and maybe that proves that there are moments in life when it’s better to just take off flying and let the wind carry you.

He wonders if that was what happened to Kenma, yesterday morning. Not that Kenma would _sprint_ , probably, thinks Hinata, but maybe Kenma’s also someone who loses himself sometimes.

Maybe next time, he’ll lose himself in volleyball too. Next time they play, he'll get his blood pumping through his veins so hard he can hear it pound in his ears, next time...

Homework is a lost cause. Hinata puts his pencil down and wheels his chair back, staring at the ceiling. The fan whirs noisily overhead. Somewhere in the house, he hears Natsu’s footsteps running wild.

He curves the palm of his hand, hefts the weight of an imaginary ball. His fingertips tingle like they’re brushing a flame. He flexes his toes, his feet, poised to _jump_ ; he swings his arm upwards like the spiker in his poster -

Slams it down so hard that he hits the hard wood of his desk, and lets out a strangled squawk.

His phone is still flipped open. Kenma’s text blinks up at him. Hinata picks it up, and types a reply. It’s short, because he’s typing it one-handed, shaking off the sting on his reddened right palm.

_it was fun!!!_

Kenma’s reply comes in almost instantaneously, before Hinata’s had a chance to put his phone back down.

 _you were interesting.  
_ _kuro won’t let us go home… we have to talk about the match now._

Hinata feels a grin spread over his face, warm like the sun over the mountains when he bikes to school.

 

 

_until next time, kenma! ^^_

 

 

There are two sakura trees by the entrance of Karasuno High. On Hinata’s first day of school, they bloomed, clouds of wispy pink and dreams that fluttered through the courtyard at his feet; now, it is nearing the end of May and the flowers have faded. The trees have burst into new life.

 _Green_ , thinks Hinata, looking up and shading his eyes with one hand.

Over in Tokyo, the trees are green too, but there are fewer of them. Instead of mountains, there are buildings of grey and white in the distance, standing tall against a pale sky crisscrossed with wires. He’d asked Kenma what Nekoma High School looked like. Kenma had sent him a picture. They have sakura in their courtyard too.

_eeehhhh, it’s so big!!!!_

_it’s just school…_

Hinata takes his phone out and snaps a picture of his trees to send later, during lunch. The sky is bluer here in Miyagi-ken.

He puts on an extra burst of speed through the gates, round the back to the bicycle parking, and sprints down the corridor to his classroom. The weight of his volleyball shoes in his gym bag sends a thrill straight to his feet.

Outside, the sun is impossibly bright. The pavement seems to glow. It’s a day for playing.

Every day is a day for playing.

He wants to be out there. Out there, under the floodlights of a stadium, with the heat at his back. And the cheers of the crowd, followed, always, by that hush, the whooshing sound of silence and the ball in his ears.

 

 

He’d typed that to Kenma once, during a practice, riding high on a wave of sweet, sweet agony from spiking one of Kageyama’s tosses so hard that he nearly dislocated his elbow. He’d typed it while lying down on the bench for the rest of the afternoon, to distract himself from watching and sulking.

_i want to play!!! like, a proper match!_

_then… you shouldn’t work so hard that you injure yourself_

_< (｀´)> i’m not!!!_

_okay. if you say so._

Midway through composing a snarky reply, Hinata’s elbow gives way and his fingers slip, and he drops his phone on his face, yelping so loudly that Asahi misses the ball Kageyama sets for him.

“Hinata! Are you okay?” Asahi calls.

“Ignore him, Asahi-san!” Kageyama yells angrily. “He’s taken balls to the face before! He’s fine! He’s _indestructible!_ ”

 

 

 _Indestructible_ is how Hinata feels when he’s on the court. When he jumps, and he soars, sees the other side of the net, a gleaming horizon that’s clear for him -

His whole body vibrates with energy, and in that moment, he can _see_ everything.

 _Indestructible_ is how he feels when he’s facing a strong enemy, because he feels their gaze on him all the time and he knows that they’re _watching the short number 10_ and they’re taking him _seriously_ and they’re strong and that means that Hinata, too, is strong, stronger than he ever thought he could be in this small body of his.

_don’t underestimate me!!!_

_when have i ever…_

_Point_ , thinks Hinata, because trying to outsmart Kenma is a losing battle.

 

 

The truth is, Kenma’s still the only person who’s never looked at him and said _you’re so short!_ , or assumed he was the libero. Kenma’s still the only person who hadn’t done a double-take and stared after Hinata said he was a middle blocker. Who shrugged it off like it was nothing.

It makes Hinata think, yeah, it _is_ nothing - he’s short, but he’s still standing on the court, isn’t he?

And it’s not like Kenma isn’t always watching, because he _is_ , he never stops watching; and it’s kind of like, maybe, like he’s always noticing something more.

Hinata doesn’t even know what it is in himself that Kenma sees. But just knowing there’s _something_ gets him so fired up he can’t _wait_ , he just wants to run, run down that path by the mountains till he becomes the wild, wayward summer breeze, hot and urgent and pressing by your cheek because it can’t wait can’t wait _can’t wait_ -

_when we play again, i’m going to spike so hard you won’t see it coming!!!_

_you’ve already done that_

_i’m gonna do it again!!_

 

 

When Hinata was eleven years old, he’d had a penpal for the first and only time in his life. It was a school project, and they exchanged letters over the winter term with students from a school in Kawasaki. Hinata had been paired up with a boy called Shimada-kun who was _really_ into basketball.

And Hinata remembers thinking, making friends with someone through words is _hard_. Writing is hard. The words that come out of his mouth so naturally when he talks look like a mess on the page. His penmanship always makes his teacher shake her head and sigh in resignation. His wrist cramps up and his hand aches.

Even now, he’s not so great at using his phone. There’s too _much_ going on right here, right now; there are the voices of his teammates and the springy feel of the wooden flooring beneath his feet, there’s the taste of Pocari Sweat, the smell of Air Salonpas. Sometimes he forgets that he _has_ a phone and that there’s someone whom he doesn’t see every day who sends him texts. But he’s getting better at remembering. He’s getting better, he hopes, at being a friend.

And there are things that you only learn about someone through their words. Like what it is that makes them think of you, makes your phone light up in the middle of the day or night. Like whether they use emoji. Like how quickly they come back to you.

Kenma’s _fast_ , always fast, unless he’s in the middle of a video game, and then Hinata can wait for _hours and hours_. And it’s funny, because Kenma’s not the kind of person who is _fast_ face to face. Kenma texts like he speaks, kind of, but at the same time, kind of _not really_.

Hinata knows that texts like he speaks. He doesn’t really know any other way to express himself. He always feels like there aren’t enough exclamation marks in the dictionary for what he wants to say.

Maybe Kenma’s words come easier from the other side of a screen. Hinata wonders what it’ll be like when they meet again. _When_ , not _if_ , because they have to. Kenma’s waiting for him.

 

 

_you guys are gonna be coming here, right?_

 

 

When Hinata messes up on his English test, he feels _super crappy_ for any number of reasons, among which are that Yachi put in so much work to help him, that he _got all the answers right_ and still managed to get them all wrong (isn't that just the _ironic_ story of his life), that the team’s counting on him, that he’s wasting precious volleyball time in supplementary summer classes when he could be training with the rest of them in _Tokyo_ -

His phone sits, silently, in the palm of his hand. He won’t hear from Kenma this morning. He’s probably getting ready for the start of the training camp. Doing warm-ups with his team.

 _Ugh,_ thinks Hinata, and he groans out loud when his head hits the desk.

Kageyama kicks him as the teacher walks in, and shoots him a _look_ that says, they’re gonna make it.

Hinata clenches his fist and buries his knuckles into the hard plastic of his tabletop. They’re gonna make it. They’re gonna make it. He has to.

When he finishes his paper in _record time_ and finally legs it out of that classroom with Kageyama in his wake, when they burst into Saeko-neesan’s van, Hinata buckles himself into the front seat and rests his sweaty palms on his knees, gripping his trackpants so tightly he feels like he might rip a hole in them.

He thinks about texting Kenma, but Kenma probably won’t see it.

His foot taps on the rubber mat beneath his seat, restless and impatient. His whole body feels like it’s vibrating out of control as he stares out the windshield at the road, whizzing furiously by.

They roar into Tokyo in a cloud of dust and the blazing heat of July.

Hinata steps into the doorway.

And there’s Kenma, peeking round Kuroo’s back, his eyes widening and his mouth open.

 

* * *

 

_“Shouyou!”_

_“Kenma.”_

 

* * *

  

Sometimes, Hinata stops to marvel that Kenma is _Kenma_  to him, and it’s really only because Hinata has a big mouth and it had just _slipped_ out like that when they’d first met at that kerb by the roadside.

 _Kozume_ , he had said, when Hinata asked his name, and _Kenma_ , after a pause; yet he’s never been _Kozume_ , to Hinata, and he’s never been _Hinata_ to the older boy either.

And now they are friends, _really_ friends, and it comes rushing back to Hinata as he stares at Kenma staring back at him, that words on a screen from miles away are real after all, that all those nights he was lying on his bed, face half-smooshed into a pillow and complaining to Kenma about something dumb that happened in practice today, Kenma was doing exactly the same here in Tokyo.

 

 

“Hey, Hinata, want to get supper?”

“Ehh? Ah, Sugawara-san! I - ”

Hinata hesitates for a split second. He hears, from behind him, two sets of footsteps running up, and he turns -

“Nah,” says Hinata, with a smile. “I’ll catch you guys later.”

Suga follows his gaze, and nods in understanding.

“We’ll bring you back a nikuman,” he says with a wave, walking off just as Kenma and Inuoka show up, and Kenma calls Hinata’s name the way he does, with a soft, sharp intensity, like he’s searching for the answer to one of his puzzle games.

“Shouyou.”

 

 

_“Your team’s still so strong! You’ve already had four straight-set wins?!”_

_“Yeah… I guess we’re doing well.”_

_“That’s amazing!”_

_“It’s not because of me.”_

_“Don’t listen to him, Shouyou! Kenma-san is the brain of our team!”_

_“Inuoka…”_

 

 

They walk round the Fukurodani High School building, and Inuoka heaps effusive praise on Hinata for his freak quick again. Kenma just listens.

In person, Kenma is quieter than in texts, but when he speaks, he speaks openly, to Hinata’s chagrin.

"You're using me as a reference for crappiness?" he groans, and Kenma, without the slightest hint of irony, nods.

In person, Kenma’s voice is softer, and deeper, than Hinata remembers. It echoes off the walls and fades into the dark of Tokyo’s night sky. It’s funny to hear someone speak again after a few months, especially when you talk to them all the time anyway.

In person, Kenma is taller. Just a little. Hinata, so acutely conscious of height, remembers that Kenma’s taller than _he_ is, at any rate, but Kenma paints himself into the colours of his bright, vibrant team so easily that he always _feels_ shorter than he actually is. Well, still - he's not  _tall_ , not like most volleyball players.

Hinata draws himself up to his full height. Kenma’s falling into a natural slouch, hands in his pockets. They almost match, when they’re like this.

Kenma’s probably the sort of person that people underestimate all the time too.

Maybe he’s a small giant as well, in his own way. The thought warms Hinata's heart.

 

 

The next day, Nekoma is playing Fukurodani, and it’s something like a whiz-bang spectacle of fireworks from start to finish. Hinata only glimpses a bit of it during his time-out break.

It’s the first time he’s been able to watch one of Nekoma’s games from the outside. There’s a lot to take in. The ball flies over the net, back and forth, swift as the wind; there are flashy spikes from Lev and Inuoka’s super-quick blocks and their libero’s miracle saves, and then there’s Kenma.

 _My team is strong._ That’s what Kenma always says.

Hinata can see with his own eyes that Kenma is strong too. He can hear the irritable admiration in Kageyama’s voice when he says, _that broad was off the cuff?_ , see the eyebrow, raised like a challenge, at the setter responsible for Lev's freakish attack.

_You’re strong, Kenma!_

But even as Hinata thinks this, he knows that it’s not something Kenma ever admits. It’s almost like he doesn’t _want_ to be strong. Even though, _even though_ , the way he holds himself on the court, the way his eyes track every movement of the ball and the players’ feet, everything - everything about Kenma is silently calling out -

Calling out like a _feeling_ , like something he can’t put into words, can’t put into a text.

 

 

No, it’s not that Kenma doesn’t want to be strong. It's also not that Kenma doesn't want to play volleyball.

He just doesn’t want anyone to notice that he is, or the way he's coiled like a spring, a tense kitten on the court, eyes aglow.

 _Too bad_ , thinks Hinata gleefully. _Oh, I am so on to you._

 

 

It's only fair, after all. Kenma's been on to him since they first met.

 

* * *

 

 

The watermelons are juicy and cool. They taste like the end of summer. The smell of barbecued meat is in the air, charred and crisp and delicious, and Hinata’s stomach gives a low rumble. He’s already had a plate of onigiri and chicken. He’s going back for seconds anyway. Maybe thirds. The food is  _good_.

Kenma, next to him, takes a bite of his slice and chews on it thoughtfully. Kenma does almost everything thoughtfully.

“That real match between us…” he murmurs.

“It _will_ happen. It’s gonna happen,” Hinata says. “We’ll train hard for _Harukou_ , so, Kenma, you have to make it! And we’ll meet there!”

Kenma looks up at him over his watermelon, eyes sparking, the hint of a smile on his face.

“Yeah,” he says.

“I’ll text you,” says Hinata. “Along the way. I’ll tell you how we’re doing in our prelims. You gotta text me too, okay?”

Kenma takes his time with his mouthful of watermelon before replying. Hinata waits. He’s learned to be quiet, with Kenma; it’s nothing short of a miracle for Hinata to be quiet about anything, but months of becoming a friend with someone who’s far away has finally taught him how.

After a while, Kenma remarks, “I _always_ text you.”

He doesn’t look at Hinata as he says this. He’s gazing off into the distance, at a horizon that’s _just_ within their reach, if they drop everything now and run towards it, if they continue to believe in each other -

“Yeah,” says Hinata, with a grin.

His next bite of watermelon tastes extra sweet.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come talk Kenhina to me @nahyutas on Twitter, I get very excited over them ♥


End file.
